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China is struggling to catch up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite service.
SpaceX’s Starlink already has nearly 7,000 satellites in orbit and serves about 5 million customers in more than 100 countries, according to SpaceX. The service is designed to provide high-speed Internet to customers in remote and underserved areas.
SpaceX hopes to expand its mega-constellation to 42,000 satellites. China is aiming for a similar scale and hopes to have about 38,000 satellites in its three low-Earth orbit internet projects known as Qianfan, Guo Wang and Honghu-3.
Apart from Starlink, in Europe Eutelsat OneWeb has also launched more than 630 Internet satellites into low Earth orbit. Amazon also plans to create a large LEO constellation, now called the Kuiper Project, consisting of more than 3,000 satellites, although the company has only launched two satellite prototypes until now.
With so much competition, why would China invest money and effort in such mega-constellations?
“Starlink has really demonstrated that it can bring Internet access to individuals and citizens in remote corners and give citizens access to the Internet and to any website, to any application that they want,” said Steve Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for international peace.
“For China, the big push has been to censor what citizens can access,” Feldstein said. “And so for them, they say, ‘Well, this represents a real threat.’ If Starlink can provide uncensored content to our citizens or individuals from countries that are allied with us, that is something that can really break through our censorship regime. .. And that’s why we need to come up with an alternative.”
Blaine Curcio, founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting, agrees. “In some countries, China may see it almost as differences. It’s like, “Well, maybe we’re not selling the market that fast, but hey, we’ll censor your internet if you want us to, and we’ll do it with a smile on our faces.”
Experts say that while Chinese Constellations will not be the Internet provider of choice for countries such as the US, Western Europe, Canada and other US allies, many other regions may be open to Chinese services.
“There are several geographic areas in particular that could be attractive to a competitor like Starlink, particularly one made by China, including China itself,” said Juliana Süss, a fellow at the German Institute for International Affairs and Security Affairs. “Russia, for example, as well as Afghanistan and Syria, are not yet covered by Starlink. And there are also large parts of Africa that have yet to be covered.”
“We saw that 70% of the 4G infrastructure on the African continent has already been built by Huawei,” Suess added. “So having a space perspective can push it even further there.”
Beyond a tool for geopolitical influence, having one’s own satellite Internet array is increasingly a national security necessity, especially when ground-based Internet infrastructure is damaged during war.
“When it comes to the difference Starlink technology has made on the battlefield in Ukraine, one of the big leaps we’ve seen is the advent of unmanned warfare and the connected battlefield,” Feldstein said. “Having satellite weapons is something that is seen as an important military advantage. And so I think China sees all of this and says that investing in this is very important to our national security goals.”
Follow up video to learn more about why China is building these megaconstellations and what challenges the country will face.
